James George (diplomat)


James George was a Canadian diplomat, political and environmental activist, author, and "spiritual seeker." A founder of the Threshold Foundation and president of the Sadat Peace Foundation, he led the Friends of the Earth international mission to Kuwait and the Persian Gulf to assess post-war environmental damage.

Early life

George was born in September 1918 in Toronto, Ontario. He received a Littauer Fellowship to Harvard University, and was a 1940 Rhodes Scholar for Ontario, studying at Upper Canada College, Trinity College, and University of Toronto, and was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Sacred Letters by Trinity College, University of Toronto, at its May 2008 Convocation. While a student at the University of Toronto, he was a member of the Alpha Delta Phi fraternity.

Career

George served in the Royal Canadian Naval Volunteer Reserve during World War II, attaining to the rank of Lt. Commander, following which he represented Canada at the United Nations. Between 1955 and 1957 he was deputy director at the Intelligence division at the External affairs in Ottawa. He was later the Canadian deputy permanent representative at NATO in Paris from 1957 and 1960. Another Canadian working at the same time at NATO was Hugh Hambleton, later revealed to have been working as a spy for the Soviet Union.
George then served as High Commissioner of Canada to Sri Lanka 1960–64, then in Paris at the Canadian embassy, High Commissioner to India and Ambassador to Nepal 1967–72, and Ambassador to Iran and the Gulf States 1972–77. Commonwealth Secretary-General Arnold Smith credited George with helping to contain the conflict between India and Pakistan in 1971, when East Pakistan became Bangladesh.
Retiring from diplomatic service in 1977, George turned his attention to ecological and spiritual issues full time. While directing Threshold Foundation he helped to found in London, he played a leading role in the adoption by the International Whaling Commission of a moratorium on high seas whaling and to ban all whaling in the Indian Ocean and the Antarctic. In 1984, he co-founded the Anwar Sadat Peace Foundation to promote peace in the Middle East, and the following year was a founder of the Rainforest Action Network. More recently, he has worked to develop wind power resources in British Columbia, and has been helping to develop new technology to make the desalination of seawater more affordable.
His publisher's bio describes George as "first and foremost a spiritual seeker." During his years of diplomatic service, he met numerous spiritual thinking and teachers, including Krishnamurti, Thomas Merton, Yogaswami of Sri Lanka, Dr. Javad Nurbakhsh, Dudjom Rinpoche, and Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche. Across six decades he has been a devoted practitioner of the Gurdjieff Work, and was a close disciple of the late Madame de Salzmann, G.I. Gurdjieff's primary student. In 1968, he wrote a letter of recommendation for Yogi Bhajan on the occasion of his commencing his teaching mission in the West.

Personal life

George was twice married, first to Caroline Parfitt, 1942–96, with whom he had three children: Daniel, Graham and Caroline Randolph. He married Barbara Brady Wright in San Francisco on 1 January 2005, at the age of 86.
In September 2007, CBC aired a short documentary about him titled "In the Spirit of Diplomacy," by independent film-maker Marco Mascarin. This piece used elements of a 1975 documentary by Paul Saltzman entitled "Saint Demetrius Rides a Red Horse: James George Leaves India."
George turned 100 in September 2018 and died in February 2020 at the age of 101.

Publications